Best wine with pizza? Try Chianti

Organic vineyard's wine pairs well with pizza, grilled meats and more

Chef Nicholas Harary

As a chef, my life has revolved around food for as long as I can remember. I should say my life has revolved around food and arguing about it, as there always seems to be a need to determine a ranking of "what's best," regardless of the cuisine.

In high school, an argument over who had the best Italian sub quickly devolved into my buddies and I going to five sub shops back to back to settle the dispute. Not so easy when you only get 35 minutes to leave school for lunch.

Needless to say, we spent some time after school to think about our unfortunate "choices," as the VP of Discipline loved to say.

Even my bachelor party was a tour in New York City to settle a dispute of the "best-tasting/most unhealthy food." Let me suggest avoiding any event that starts by eating appetizers at Virgil's BBQ and ends with entrees at Peter Luger's.

The two things that I distinctly remember from that evening are answering yes to the question, "Do you want extra grease?" and the comedian Bill Murray (a frequent customer at Jean-Georges) joining the party and bringing us to a place that had nothing to do with food.

I guess I haven't matured much since. A few weeks ago, to settle "The Pizza Argument" heated dispute once and for all, some friends and I went to nine pizzerias from Staten Island to Brooklyn to Queens and back to Manhattan.

I've been making a lot of pizza this summer, so this argument has been coming up weekly. We are definitely getting older, because my favorite quote of the day from one of my buddies was, "Please tell me this is almost over."

Below are the places we voted best to worst:

1. Denino's (Staten Island)

2. New Park (Queens)

3. Keste (Manhattan)

4. Joe's (Manhattan)

5. Joe & Pat's (Staten Island)

6. DeFaras (Brooklyn)

7. Brothers (Staten Island)

8. Spumoni Gardens (Brooklyn)

9. Grimaldis (Brooklyn)

Twenty Tums and several bloated days later, I settled back into my pattern of making pizza every Sunday in my relatively new backyard pizza oven. Given how much pizza has been coming out of that oven, we've been experimenting quite a lot with which wines go best with pizza.

We had a great one the other day: Corzano e Paterno Chianti 2009, a terrifically food-friendly Chianti with such pure fruit, almost like Pinot Noir with just a touch of earthy rusticity.

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Best wine with pizza? Try Chianti

As a chef, my life has revolved around food for as long as I can remember. I should say my life has revolved around food and arguing about it, as there always seems to be a need to determine a

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